Let’s start with the good news first, because frankly, after this heaping helping of pickle juice, what’s left?

The NCAA will never again look this bad. In theory, anyway.

NCAA president Mark Emmert has previously mentioned Miami and the Death Penalty in the same sentence, but that seems unlikely now, Matt Hayes writes. (AP Photo)

Just when you thought the most convoluted, contrived, ill-conceived—and now corrupt—governing body in the world of sports couldn’t get any worse, the NCAA somehow outdid itself. Are you ready for this?

Deep breath, people. Here we go:

The NCAA hired the attorney of an incarcerated former booster they were investigating to help investigate the very institution they were investigating.

If you think that sounds unthinkable, get a load of this: NCAA president Mark Emmert—who publicly raged for months about the possibility of using the dreaded “Death Penalty” in the Miami case—says the NCAA hired now-incarcerated Miami booster Nevin Shapiro’s attorney, Maria Elena Perez, in December of 2011.

And he wants you to believe he just found out about it a few weeks ago.

“I am deeply disappointed and frustrated and even angry about these circumstances,” says the carnival barker. I mean, the spin doctor. I mean, the bully.

So now we have the head of the NCAA—the man university presidents hired to run their organization—unable to keep even his own house in order. Of course, we’ve known this for years, but never has it become such a public, undeniable spectacle.

It’s so comical that Miami president Donna Shalala—who somehow still has her job after Shapiro ran roughshod over her university for years—actually said Wednesday she is “concerned” by Emmert’s announcement. Imagine that.

The president who is seen in a photo accepting a fat check from Shapiro at a booster function—none would doubt its money he could have earned from his near billion-dollar Ponzi scheme—is “frustrated and disappointed” by Emmert announcing that the Miami investigation has been compromised.

Frustrated? Maybe Shalala should look at this another way: It’s a get out of jail free card for the Canes. King Emmert had no answer on a hastily arranged conference call Wednesday afternoon when asked about the possibility of a mistrial for Miami.

“It’s premature to answer that question,” Emmert said.

Great. I’ll answer it for you: This case is over. The fact that Emmert is even addressing that possibility tells you the NCAA already has crossed that bridge—and it’s a long way back.

Emmert says one investigator who worked the Miami case has been fired, and another has left the NCAA. The NCAA hasn’t been able to speak with either.

This, of course, means the NCAA will fight Miami with both hands behind its back. One underlying question from Miami attorneys will torpedo anything the NCAA can muster in its case against the Canes: How do we know any or all information wasn’t obtained illegally?

There is precedent now. Remember, the NCAA hired the attorney of a convicted felon to help get information it couldn’t normally obtain without subpoena power.

Anyone worth his weight in "Law and Order" reruns knows the NCAA is in deep, deep trouble. And not only with the Miami case.

It was Emmert who last year during a nationally televised press conference declared he was given the power by the presidents to act unilaterally on the Penn State scandal, then buried the program with debilitating sanctions for four years despite never investigating it.

So Emmert and his henchmen—one more time for people who can’t wrap their minds around it: university presidents hire Emmert to run the NCAA (see: fox/henhouse)—are adamant that they’re beyond reproach in stepping outside the NCAA manual to punish Penn State. But, according to Emmert, it's “beyond the pale” that their investigators did so in the Miami case.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett must be doing backflips right now. His once longshot plan to sue the NCAA over sanctions imposed on Penn State now looks winnable after this debacle—in a worse-case scenario.

The NCAA has hired former Homeland Security advisor Kenneth Wainstein, and will give him free rein on not only the Miami case, but to examine the “policies, practices and regulatory environment” of—until now—an exclusive, private, tax-exempt company. The first thing Wainstein will see is that bills and invoices from December 2011 were submitted for legal work that hadn’t been approved.

Then he’ll hear Emmert’s reasoning.

“The responsibility for all these cases follows the normal chain of command,” Emmert said, and apparently, the most important man in the organization isn’t part of that normal chain of command. “We want to find out exactly when people knew what was going on and why in the world this happened in the first place.”

Yeah, well, I want to find out why it took 12 months for the sheriff of all things amateur sports to find out his organization was in bed with a convicted felon.